A street in Hong Kong’s main financial district on Tuesday. Large parts of the city are shut down.Credit
Carlos Barria/Reuters

HONG KONG — The pro-democracy demonstrators are young and passionate and, with their so-called Umbrella Revolution, have captured people’s imaginations here and abroad.

But as the shutdown of large areas of this financial capital of 7.2 million drags on with no obvious political solution in sight, some Hong Kong residents are voicing skepticism over the demonstrators’ goals and strategies as well as anxiety over emerging divisions in society.

“What I feel very concerned about and very sad about is that the polarization is very acute,” said Lau Nai-keung, a businessman who helped draft the Basic Law, the mini-constitution used to govern Hong Kong since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. “Father and son can’t talk to each other. Husband and wife quarrel, and so on. It’s becoming very common nowadays.”

“I think whatever happens,” he said, “the wound will take more than a decade to heal.”

Looming over the political showdown is the question of how much popular support the protesters have, and under what conditions that support might wane. In recent days, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets and helped shut down four major areas of the city. Though many of those who began this round of protests were students, the movement won sympathy from a wide cross-section of society after the police opened fire with tear gas and pepper spray.

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Still, the numbers are less than those of other street rallies and marches in Hong Kong, including ones against proposed Chinese Communist Party policies that have drawn hundreds of thousands of people. And critics like Mr. Lau contend that popular support of the current movement is much less than what the protesters claim. For instance, many among the business elite privately denounce the protests and one commerce association has discussed filing a lawsuit against protest organizers for financial loss. And few middle-age and elderly people are now attending the nighttime rallies.

Some skeptics, like Joe Leung, 58, complained about the inconveniences being caused by the protests, especially the traffic as protesters camped out on major boulevards. “I want them to protest at Victoria Park or Tamar Park,” he said. “Don’t disrupt our lives.”

What is more troubling, the critics say, is that the protesters, led by students and by organizers of a movement called Occupy Central With Love and Peace, are trying to confront one of the world’s most powerful political entities — the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party — with no coherent strategy for achieving their stated goal of universal suffrage for Hong Kong by 2017.

“It’s nice to be dubbed an Umbrella Revolution, but we all know we can’t have a revolution,” said Robert Chow, the founder of Silent Majority for Hong Kong, a group started last year to oppose the Occupy Central movement. “So what is going to happen? They’re pushing for a confrontation, they’re pushing for something that will lead to the world condemning Beijing? They want bloodshed?”

Without reliable polling data this week, it is difficult to tell how many people disapprove of the protesters and to pinpoint demographic patterns among the movement’s supporters and its detractors. Surveys have shown for years that three-fifths or more of the Hong Kong population favors democracy. But some democracy supporters have long been wary of confrontational tactics.

What Prompted the Hong Kong Protests?

Hong Kong belongs to China and operates under a policy of “one country, two systems.”

The current city leader, Leung Chun-ying, has clashed with the pro-democracy opposition. After the crackdown on protesters, some called for his resignation.

Michael DeGolyer, a longtime pollster at Hong Kong Baptist University, said that academic polling done before the start of the demonstrations provided strong hints of the levels — and limits — of support for Occupy Central and other groups now protesting.

Surveys indicated that if the pro-democracy camp split and only radicals participated in the demonstrations, then around 20 percent of the population would support them, Mr. DeGolyer said. If moderate democrats backed the protests as well, as has occurred, then support for the demonstrators would be around 35 percent. And 45 percent to 50 percent of the population would back the democrats if they stayed united and if the Beijing and Hong Kong governments reacted harshly to them — as happened with the violent police confrontations on Sunday.

The unpopularity of Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive who took office in 2012 and is allied with Beijing, has benefited the protesters. The Hong Kong University Public Opinion Program conducted a telephone survey of 1,006 Hong Kong residents from Sept. 17 to 22, right before the students took action, and found that only 21 percent approved of Mr. Leung and 57 percent disapproved of him.

But while a significant portion of the Hong Kong population may have rallied to the side of the protesters early this week, maintaining that support may be difficult, Mr. DeGolyer warned, especially if China takes punitive measures that could hurt the economy, like restricting the number of mainland tourists coming here.

At a news conference on Thursday, Regina Ip, a pro-Beijing lawmaker who is chairwoman of the New People’s Party, said the protests had already damaged the tourism, restaurant and retail industries. “I think very severe damage is being done not just to the tycoons, but also to the ordinary people in the streets,” she said. “So many popular tourist areas are being shut down — Canton Road, Causeway Bay. Clearly a lot of economic damage is being inflicted, and also very severe damage to our image overseas.”

Sitting next to her was Allan Zeman, a prominent businessman who developed a popular bar area years ago in Hong Kong and is doing deals in mainland China. “The only way you solve problems is through dialogue and not through demonstrations and forcing people to do things,” said Mr. Zeman, who is on the board of advisers of Ms. Ip’s party.

In the streets, there have been occasional confrontations between protesters and their opponents. On Wednesday, at the protest site on Canton Road, a few critics of the pro-democracy crowd shouted at them from a sidewalk. Some protesters stood up to respond, and heated shouting matches unfolded. But the protesters quickly changed their approach, waving to the critics and shouting, “Bye bye.” The tension faded.

The protesters have two main demands: that Beijing remove Mr. Leung as chief executive, and that it renounce a decision made in August by the Chinese National People’s Congress to limit the nomination process for chief executive candidates in 2017 to selection by a 1,200-person committee that would mostly be aligned with Beijing’s interests.

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Critics of the protesters say President Xi Jinping and other party leaders would never give serious consideration to such demands. Indeed, on Thursday, People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper, published a front-page commentary that said the party fully supported Mr. Leung and that the actions of the protesters threatened to drag Hong Kong into “chaos.”

In Hong Kong, those sentiments are being echoed in some quarters.

“They’re living in their own dreams, totally detached from the reality,” said Mr. Lau, the businessman who helped draft the Basic Law. “Their demands, their objectives, are totally ludicrous.”

What the protest organizers ultimately want, he said, is “a replay of June 4” — the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 in which hundreds and possibly thousands of pro-democracy advocates were killed by the Chinese Army, resulting in worldwide condemnation of China.

Alan Wong, Keith Bradsher and Austin Ramzy contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on October 3, 2014, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Some City Residents, Weary of Disruptions, Find Fault With Protesters’ Methods. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe